Cross-posted at http://readingisgoodforyou.wordpress....

What Went Down

The end of Voyager saw Jamie, Claire and company to the New World and Drums of Autumn picks up where that book left off, showing us how the gang establishes themselves in the backcountry of North Carolina. There are all kinds of exciting events to keep us entertained in this installment: dramatic interactions with Jamie’s aunt Jocasta, perilous encounters with wildlife, nature, and disease, and even a certain someone’s long-lost son’s accidental trip to the bottom of the outhouse pit.

We can’t, of course, forget about Jamie and Claire’s grown daughter, Bree, who was left behind in the modern times when Claire made her trip through the stones in the last book. She has grown closer to Roger, the lad who helped track down Jamie, but is now torn between pursuing her burgeoning relationship with him and warning her parents about a news clipping she has discovered that puts them in danger in just a few years time.

The Good, the (not really) Bad and the (definitely not) Ugly (spoilers ahead)

I think DoA, at least in my mind, suffers from middle of the series syndrome. There is quite a bit to love about this book and the plot never drags, but its events don’t seem to stick out as prominently in my mind as that of some of the other books in the series. I tend to lump it together with The Fiery Cross, which isn’t at all where it ought to be.

There are some lovely Jamie and Claire moments, like when Claire quotes to Jamie from the Book of Ruth in the bible, telling him that she will follow him wherever he may go, or when they lay in bed simply talking. And, by golly, it seems like even when the two of them are in mortal peril, they can’t keep from making me laugh. I love how Claire is not the type of woman to stand in a corner, wringing her hands, when danger comes calling, but fights back with whatever is at hand. Even if it is a fish. Against a fully grown black bear. And thanks to Jamie and Claire, I now know that I’m not drunk if I can find my arse with both hands and my husband’s arse will fall under this category. Two becomes one flesh, and all, you know.

And then there was the second half of the book, which I think could be summed up nicely as “honesty is the best policy.” If the characters had employed a little more honesty in their dealings with one another, much of the drama that occurred would have been eliminated. I mean, seriously, ladies, if you wish to be married to a man someday, it’s probably best not to leave him letters making it seem as if you are breaking it off with him, when if fact you are traveling back in time two hundred years, hoping you can complete your task and come back to the future without him realizing you are gone. Not exactly the best way to begin a marriage. And gentlemen, it’s also probably not a good idea to beat up the man you suspect raped your daughter, sell him to Indians living hundreds of miles away from you, and then proceed to tell your wife you merely punched a tree. I seriously wanted to smack the both of them!

This, of course, brings to mind the best part of this series: the fact that the line between fiction and reality is slightly blurred when it comes to these characters. This may sound mental, but Jamie and Claire and the rest of the Outlander crew feel more like old friends than characters going through struggles that an author has devised to cause drama and excitement in a plot. Gabaldon has created such depths to her characters that it’s hard to remember sometimes that you can’t sit them down and give them a bit of a lecture when they do idiotic things.

And so the true beauty of books like Drums of Autumn is that we can again and again find ourselves immersed in an intricate world, spending time with characters we have grown to love and hold dear to our hearts. ( )

I enjoyed this book very much. Life almost is normal for Claire and Jamie. He finally gets to meet his daughter, who comes across some unfortunate circumstances. The character Lord John comes to his own here, as does the villain (with a bit of a heart) Stephen Bonnet. ( )

This took me a long time to slog through, and I think the last time I read it it was hard work, too, mostly because the focus is shifting from Jamie and Claire and I don’t particularly care for any of the other characters. One thing that I really struggled with this time was the roving POV. Each time it was a new section and a new “I” it took me a good couple of paragraphs to work out who the hell was talking to me. As the POV switched quite regularly that was a lot of time that I was out of the story. ( )

These books drive me CRAZY and yet I CAN'T STOP READING THEM. I have friends who have read the entire Twilight series, and while let's give Gabaldon credit for being a much better writer than Meyer, it's in a lot of ways the same hypnotic trainwreck: an impossibly perfect author proxy heroine with no personality save the smugness that comes with knowing she is impossibly perfect, a universally desired hero whose preference for the heroine over everyone else he has ever met, male or female, all of whom want him, is yet more proof of her impossible perfection, and a large amount of page space devoted to said hero and heroine discussing her perfection and calling these discussions love. AND I CAN'T LOOK AWAY.

Anyhoo, so in this book our scene has moved to 1767 America. Remember how incredibly (and inexplicably, given her 1960's origin) racist our heroine is? Well, let's put her among Native Americans! What could possibly go wrong? Nothing, unless you have a problem with the word "savages", used an awful lot. Interestingly, the eighteenth-century characters tend to call them "Indians"; it is our heroine who pulls out the "red savages" tag. Also she makes fun of how they smell. In return, they recognize her as a more magical shaman than any of their own race (no, seriously, she somehow develops mystical Native American-based powers; this is not a reference to her medical training) and respect her enormously, and in one case a Native American spirit comes to rescue her. When she needs rescue because she decided to shelter from a lightning storm under a tree. Hoo boy.

Meanwhile, in the twentieth century, our heroine's daughter has fallen in love with a dude who subscribes to the same idea of love as her father, i.e., This Love is Fated Therefore I Get to Yell at You a Lot. When we first met this guy a couple books back he was kind of nerdy and sweet and I liked him, but the second he fell in love Gabaldon turned him into her standard romantic lead and now he's bossy and sex-crazed. And boring. The daughter is no prize herself: her version of gaydar consists of, "This guy doesn't want to sleep with me, and there is no possible explanation for that beyond homosexuality." Apparently self-satisfaction is hereditary.

At least the enormous wolf-like dog makes it through, which I feared would not be the case. And given that I read with my own enormous wolf-like dog curled up at my feet, there would have been hell to pay if Rollo had not made it.

I will always give the Outlander series 5 stars. The research that the author puts into these books, is amazing. I am so glad that none of the books I have, have pictures of the characters on them. I like to imagine them in my own mind. You will love this book. Her books are long-but worth the read. ( )